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The exponential greatness of multicam in FCPX
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[Herb Sevush] ” It would be nice if this could be done from within Ppro, but unlike Legacy there is no “camera angle” metadata in Ppro to align the clips with. I’ve requested it, but I don’t think it’s on the horizon.”
A request I have officially submitted too. I hope it’s on the horizon because it seems like such a doable thing (says the guy that doesn’t code).
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[Steve Connor] “FCPX Puts them all on one track (most of the time!) which is good”
Is there some sort of “camera angle” metadata that you assign to the various clips that enables this?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Andrew Kimery] “Short version, the 720p60 footage was on par in terms of image quality while in motion (sometimes even looking better than 1080i), it compressed much better, and it didn’t suffer from interlacing artifacts that can be a pain when you resize the frame or play with the speed.”
Same here. In my example, it’s not for news but for commercial production. The news comment probably relates to field stories rather than studio camera. In many cases (still) a lot of TV stations are shooting ENG stories with SD anamorphic DV because of the need to amortize legacy hardware.
My own opinion in watching various networks at home on a 34″ LCD TV via cable, is that there’s no discernible difference between the 720 and 1080 stations. The reason is partly cable compression and partly that consumer screens simply aren’t that good to begin with. Then add to that the fact that a lot of people are shooting content (in spots and reality-style shows) with DSLRs that skip lines, so you really don’t end up with great resolution at 1080 anyway.
This particular station was shooting commercial production with Varicam when they went HD years ago and has since moved to 5Ds and C300s. By shooting 1080 for 720 finish, they have additional angles, when shooting pieces like customer, interview-style testimonials.
Some of the multicam pieces I’ve cut for them include interviews (5D + C300) and on-location cooking segments (5D + C300 + P2). The latter mixes 1080 and 720. I found that for multicam cutting in Premiere Pro, it was better to initially edit a 1080 timeline and get the camera cut fairly close. Then move that to 720 and deal with the creative reframing.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Bret Williams] “Logically I know it shouldn’t lose anymore than the 720 to 1080 conversion, but you’ve now blown up a clip 150% in the 720p sequence that itself is going to be blown up 150% by the TV itself.”
What bothers me more about this in doing creative reframing is that it is wrong optically. When you punch in for a close-up from wider angle, it doesn’t look the same as if you natively shot it that way. But that argument goes away when production efficiency is a key ingredient.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Hi Herb,
to answer your question, YES, there is a Camera Angle in the Inspector.
So you can select a bunch of clips, and in the Inspector give them a number or a letter or a name, under the Camera Angle metadata field.If you then make your multicam clip, you can have an Automatic option of Angle Ordering.
Then it puts clips from the same Angle on the same ‘track’ in the Angle editor.
It’s pretty nice. Can’t compare with Premiere Pro though.A good experience I had was with making Compound Clips first, because I was working with a blue key interview. Both cameras needed a seperate background.
We made Compound Clips with the 3 clips having the different background. Then selecting those 2 compound clips and making a Multicam clip.So a Multicam clip with 3 angles, all 3 blue keyed, with different (motion!) background on them. All Prores. It all played back nicely.
Regards,
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Yep. The ‘awesome shit’ in FCPX for me had little to do with multicam for me at first but I just had a couple of great experiences with it so it was added to the pile. Maybe it would be helpful for you for me to describe my experience…
A co-editor of mine put together a four cam multicam very rough cut of cockpit footage from an aerobatic flight. I cut the flight down and edited cockpit conversations so it was more engaging. When I had a length of multiclip on the timeline I would play through the content and when I wanted to switch camera I would simply press a number key that corresponded to the video angle (1,2,3 or 4). You can do it on the fly or by right clicking. You can also change audio angles independently of picture, obviously. On the timeline I’m able to disable or enable any number of audio tracks from within the multicam clip. I colour corrected the gopro shots inside of the multicam clip rather than shot by shot on the timeline. It wasn’t for broadcast so I didn’t have to worry about a multitude of issues that you worry about for your television work.
In short, my experience was probably comparable to someone using Premiere. Except for all the other awesome shit. Someone like you who has such a specific need/workflow with multicam needs to try both programs (do a 30 second multicam project on each program). I’d love to hear you tell me what the pros and cons are of each NLE’s multicam process because you’d probably be much better equipped to identify the pertinent issues with each program….
So, I’ll just wait for you to get those 30 second projects done. Take your time. I’m patient.
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Someone should test it for me. 🙂
Yes “Duplicate as Snapshot” keeps it immune from any changes you make to the original project in the angle editor.
Which makes me think with Multicam one should always use the snapshot command probably.
I had no idea it worked like that thanks.
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$30 bucks.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
https://www.rippletraining.com/categories/apple-pro-apps-tutorials/final-cut…
$30 bucks.
Thanks I have all their tutorials.
It makes sense that when you double click on any Multicam project it’s the same as opening the Multicam source clip in the browser.
I have been back and looked again and the final lesson deals with this “How Multicam clips relate” but their recommended workflow for having completely different versions is to duplicate the master clip which would mean cutting from scratch.
They do not mention “Duplicate as Snapshot” even though that command was integrated into the version of FCPX they are using in my tutorial. But my tests seem to work and preserve the previous versions even when changes are made in the Angle Editor once I have duplicated a project as a snapshot but I wonder if there might be some flaws to this workflow.
I wonder if PP is simpler than this or handles it differently?
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Who are you replying to? Oliver?
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